What are the Gram Sabha and the Gram Panchayat?

A village with many questions

Lakshmanpur is a small village in the foothills of the Himalayas, with 200 houses and about 700 people, most of them farmers who grow crops and keep cows or goats. Its people need water for their fields, a road repaired after the rains and a primary school kept running. How will they decide such matters, and who will settle a quarrel over land? The answer is their local government, the Panchayat, which works through two groups: the Gram Sabha and the Gram Panchayat.

The Gram Sabha

The Gram Sabha is made up of all the adults of a village, or of a group of neighbouring villages, who are enrolled as voters. In the Gram Sabha, women and men discuss all matters related to their area and take decisions. Because every adult voter can take part directly, the Gram Sabha is a form of direct democracy at the grassroots.

The Gram Panchayat

The Gram Panchayat is the base of the Panchayati Raj system and the body closest to the people in rural areas. Its members are elected directly by the Gram Sabha. Each Gram Panchayat elects a head or president, called the Sarpanch or Pradhan. In recent years, more and more women have become Sarpanchs.

The Gram Panchayat has helpers:

• a Panchayat Secretary, who does administrative work such as calling meetings and keeping records;
• in many parts of India, a Patwari, who keeps the villagers’ land records. Some Patwaris keep maps that are generations old, which show who owned which land and how the village has changed.

Sarpanchs who made a difference

• Dnyaneshwar Kamble, a transgender person, became Sarpanch of Tarangfal in Solapur district, Maharashtra, in 2017, defeating six other candidates. Kamble’s motto is lok seva, gram seva: service to the village is service to the public.
• Vandana Bahadur Maida, of the Bhil community, became the first woman Sarpanch of Khankhandvi in Madhya Pradesh. She persuaded women to attend the Sabha meetings and took up education and sanitation.
• Popatrao Baguji Pawar turned drought-hit Hiware Bazar in Ahmednagar district, Maharashtra, green and prosperous through rainwater harvesting, watershed conservation and planting lakhs of trees, with the villagers’ help. He received the Padma Shri in 2020.

Children in the Panchayat

Panchayats are meant to listen to everyone, children included. Under the Child-Friendly Panchayat Initiative, children share their ideas in Bal Sabhas and Bal Panchayats, and village elders try to find solutions to their concerns.

• In Maharashtra, some Bal Panchayats have worked to end child labour and child marriage, and have brought many children back to school by talking to parents.
• Sangkhu Radhu Khandu Gram Panchayat in west Sikkim built compound walls to make schools safer and kitchens so that mid-day meals are cooked hygienically. It was declared a child-friendly Gram Panchayat.
• In rural Rajasthan, the Children’s Parliament of Bunker Roy’s Barefoot College let children aged 8 to 14 learn democracy through night schools and elections with voter ID cards; the elected ‘Cabinet’ helped run schools. It won the World’s Children’s Honorary Award in 2001.

Two kinds of democracy in one village

In the Panchayati Raj system, democracy works both through the direct participation of people, in the Gram Sabha, and through their elected representatives, in the Gram Panchayat. Above the village are the block and district levels; see the Panchayati Raj system.